The Complete Idiot's Guide to Surviving SHIELD Training
by VictorOfArda
Summary: Just a little story about a guy who goes from zero to hero while working for SHIELD.
1. Prologue

"You ready, Alice?"

"On your mark, Cap. Strike team – be advised, you have incoming targets, two klicks to the left."

I turned in my chair and watched four separate monitors intensely. Cap was giving the orders but I knew Fury would be waiting for a good report.

"Move out!" The captain was the first one out into the line of fire.

I watched as the team collected what they had gone for and directed them safely back out from behind enemy lines. It was a relatively clean extraction. I only heard the sound of Cap's shield bouncing off of some poor schmuck at 100 miles an hour a few times and any screams I heard were cut short by gunfire. Rumlow's doing, I'm sure.

Some days I'm amazed at the job I've got. Working for SHIELD, alongside _Captain America_ and the other Avengers every so often. Working for Fury, who never ceases to amaze me (the guy knows everything!), and with Phil, who has become my mentor is more of a friend than he'll ever know.

I never thought in a million years this would be my life. By all accounts, I was a slacker. A screw up. A leading authority when it came to procrastination. I had barely scraped by in college and even the college I went to was relatively unknown.

Oh, I know – "you went to college, blah blah blah."

Heard that a million times. But most people finish in four to five years. Took me ten. Not a record I'm real proud of. I started when I was 17. I'm 27 now, going on 28. I just didn't have the motivation to get it done and over with. That slacker trait – it gets me every time. Everyone around me was spectacular in some way – geniuses, government agents, military heroes, etc, etc.

Me? I was good at nothing. Being invisible. Doing nothing. You get the picture.

So I thought I'd write this to anyone who wants to get somewhere and think they can't. I'm not gonna sit here and say "oh, if I can do it, you can too!" To me, that's almost condescending, if not to you, then at least to me. I've also heard people say "the only thing stopping you from doing so-and-so is you." Also, not always true.

Sometimes a guy needs a leg up.

I had to work hard, but I was given a pretty good boost. Without that boost, I'd probably still be in Podunk, USA, doing nothing. I want to say I'd at least be flipping burgers, but no… I'm about 97, maybe 98% sure I'd be doing nothing, if my track record says anything about me.

Consider this a guideline to follow. You can do whatever you want. You don't even have to keep reading if you don't want to - this is America after all. But that leg up was my way into a great life and I want to return the favor. Pay it forward, if you will. If you're ready to get the heck out of Podunk, or wherever you are, whatever station of life you're stuck in, consider reading this.

My gift to anyone who reads, but especially for people like me, who aren't born winners, but made into winners.


	2. In-processing

Ch.1

"McCallister, Daniel. Front and center."

I picked up my bag and hurried to the front of the room, not wanting to keep the man with the frown waiting. It was my turn to in-process. I followed the man down a corridor into another part of the large building I was in. We passed several other new recruits who were in different stages of in-processing.

He stopped suddenly in front of a door to some obscure office and handed me over to another worker before disappearing. It was a lot to take in – paperwork to fill out, medical files that had to be handed in, measurements of my arms, legs, shoulders and inseam for new uniforms, new uniforms issued, a sea bag that filled up pretty fast. Towels, blankets, socks, razors, and finally after all that, a haircut. Well, it wasn't so much a haircut as it was it was a quick run of the clippers across my scalp. Five minutes later the barber was done. I ran my hand across my scalp. My dark hair was always somewhat long, so it was odd to feel nothing but stubble.

I turned to look at the mirror behind me and sighed. I looked like a new recruit getting ready to go through basic, which basically, I was. Honestly, I have no idea how I ended up some obscure training facility right outside of Arlington. Two weeks ago I was graduating with my bachelors' in computer forensics and now, I'm here and I still have no idea what I'm doing.

That's not entirely true. I graduated and a week later received an email from some guy named Coulson about SHIELD recruitment. I knew what SHIELD was of course, but it seemed bogus to me. I thought I was due for some kind of punishment. It might make more sense if I told you the story from the beginning.

* * *

Two days after my graduation, two of friends and I were hanging out, got bored, and started to look for something to do. One of my friends offered me a challenge: see how far into SHIELD's database I could get before I got caught.

What – was I gonna say no? Of course not. So I got to work. Everyone thinks hacking is sitting in a huge chair in some dark basement - in your mom's house, of course - with awesome visuals flying up and down like, three different screens in front of you, all while slapping the crap out of your keyboard. Not so much. SHIELD runs on server farms, much like everyone else. It was just a matter of finding weak spots in their database and exploiting it to get in.

So, I poked around and my friends, Mike and Eric, called in for pizza. About half an hour later, I was in, poking around their network and fifteen minutes after that, we had changed all the pictures on the site to pictures of cats. Mike didn't like that cat photos. He had other ideas of what should go on the site. I had to remind him that it was still SHIELD – they were probably already halfway to figuring out who we were, we didn't have time to nitpick. Also, I wasn't hard enough for federal prison, but if he wanted, he could put up the pictures himself.

We stuck with the cats.

A few days after that incident, I got that email I was telling you about from Coulson. He wanted to talk about recruitment and I was sure it was some kind of trap. I started to panic a little bit. I mean, what kind of mind games could he be playing? Surely they would just come and pick me up and haul me away, right? I might have a degree but I never said I was the most intelligent guy out there.

So, I did the dumbest thing I could think of – I erased the email and said nothing to anyone. I think I was hoping it would go away. Which of course, it didn't. I got three more just like it and erased all of them.

If it wasn't for overwhelming fear and my guilty conscience eating me alive, the emails would've been kinda funny. They read like one of those emails you get from some guy sitting in an internet café pretending to be an exiled Nigerian prince. You know the emails. The so called prince wants to mail you $100,000 through Western Union to keep safe – but he's gotta have your contact info and bank account number. Yeah.

So I was pretty shocked when the man himself – "call me Phil" – was standing on my doorstep, looking like a Men in Black extra, complete with the dark suit, the sunglasses – it was 8:30 at night, by the way – an earpiece, a SHIELD badge, and three sketchy black government SUV's sitting out on the curb.

I don't mind telling you that I was pretty freaked out. I thought for sure they were there to take me in. I really considered slamming the door in his face and making a run for it – again, not the most brilliant guy in the world – but my mother walked into the living room as he was announcing who he was and "are you gonna be rude and just let the man stand there? I raised you better than that – invite him in!"

So I did. And we talked. Turns out I wasn't in trouble after all. That's the short version of our two hour long conversation. Apparently he liked cats and wanted me to consider working for SHIELD as a tech. He said it was almost impossible for anyone to get away with what I had done. I thought it was simple, but he said something about security protocols. Whatever that meant. After the fear induced nausea went away, I realized the guy was serious. He said I had something SHIELD could really use. Well why not? I had nothing else going for me, no girlfriend, no job, nothing. How bad could this be? I filled out the application to their program – the Academy of Communications, he called it, although he said it was one of three academies.

And the rest is history.

* * *

After the haircut, I was shown the barracks I would be staying in for the next two and a half months with several other new recruits. It was depressing. One giant room with two long rows of beds. There were small tables on the right side of each bed and a large metal cabinet on the left. Every two beds shared a cabinet, it looked like. There were three of these buildings. I was staying in the third one – Charlie Barracks. The other recruits and I were ordered to pick a bed (I chose one somewhere in the middle), drop our gear and change into our new uniforms – a grey shirt with the SHIELD emblem on it over dark blue cargo pants and heavy black boots. We were then herded onto several buses and driven to the Triskelion for a word from the director.

"Attention new recruits."

Every eye in the auditorium we were seated in snapped forward to the imposing figure on the stage. He was a bald Black guy wearing all black clothing and had an eye patch. The other eye stared us all down intensely. He didn't look like the type that had a sense of humor.

"My name is Nicholas J. Fury and I am the director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics division, otherwise known as SHIELD. You have all been chosen out of thousands of applicants because you have displayed qualities worthy of SHIELD. You've all proven yourselves within your area of operations. But many of you will not pass this training – it's a proven fact. We are here to break down your old way of thinking. Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, Marine Force Recon, NCIS, FBI, DEA, NRO, ICE – I've read every one of your files, I know who's coming from where. You will be taught to think as SHIELD does. And should you successfully navigate your way through the training program, you will go on to your respective academies where you will be built up into agents of SHIELD. Good luck, and welcome to SHIELD. You are dismissed."

We all piled back onto the bus and made our way back to the training center just in time for dinner. We ate in another squat ugly building – the mess hall – and were sent back to Charlie barracks. Lights out was at 2200, which gave me half an hour to square away my belongings. At ten til, I laid down, ready for bed. The day had been long and exhausting but everything seemed alright. Coulson had warned me that the training would be the hardest thing I ever did. But if every day was like this, I'm sure I'd be fine. I drifted off to sleep, Taps being the last thing I heard.

 **Guideline #1:** _Do not_ count in-processing as your first day of training. The instructors come off very mild. Don't trust it. You will be sadly mistaken if you do.


End file.
